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The door slammed open. A masked figure in black crashed through with a battering ram. Another one stormed in behind him and dropped to his knees. Almost blending into the black of his gloves and sleeves was a Beretta 99G pistol. Then a dozen identical figures ran in, filling the room.
“Haut les mains!” came a shout from somewhere. Then, in a thick French accent, “‘Andz urp!”
Jimmy could feel the overwhelming power of his killing instinct drumming through his body. But his mind was serene. He stayed as still as all his friends and raised his hands. One thought was utterly clear: This is not NJ7. If it had been, he would have been dead by now. Besides, NJ7 wouldn’t have issued instructions in French.
The group backed towards each other. The shock on their faces changed instantly to puzzlement. Their gasps were drowned out by the protestation from Yannick’s mother. She was screaming her head off in coarse French, while Jimmy was trying to concentrate.
“Ferme-la!” he shouted, then immediately clasped his hand to his mouth. Oh my God, he thought, / speak French.
The front door was flapping open and in strode three more men. Two were dressed in black combat gear just like the others, but they carried FAMAT F9 assault rifles. Jimmy knew this for certain, in the same way he now knew French. It was all part of his conditioning – buried in his head, coming to the surface piece by lethal piece.
Between the two soldiers was a short man with a grim expression. His hair was thin and his shoulders hunched towards his ears. His skin seemed to blend in with his grey city overcoat, which was totally unsuitable for the rustic surroundings.
“By authority of the French military,” he declared in perfect English, “you are all under arrest on suspicion of espionage. Keep your hands above your heads and—”
“You’re making a mistake.” It was Viggo. He was holding a gun to the back of the Frenchman’s head. “Drop your weapons!” he shouted.
Even before Viggo had finished his sentence, the soldier to his left spun round. His rifle pointed at Viggo and his finger squeezed the trigger.
“Nan!’ snapped the man in the overcoat – just in time. The soldier held fire, but maintained his aim. Nobody moved. ‘That sounds like Christopher Viggo,” the man in grey continued, “but Christopher Viggo is not an enemy to France.”
Then he calmly issued a stream of orders in French. As one, his team lowered their guns.
“Uno?” gasped Viggo, trying to peer round at the man’s face. “Uno Stovorsky?”
“And only now do I see you’ve brought Saffron with you.” The man shook his head in disbelief.
“Hello, Uno,” Saffron called out, cool as ever. “How’s the DGSE?”
“What’s going on?” Felix whispered to Jimmy.
“The DGSE is the French Secret Service,” he replied, but more than that he couldn’t say. How come everyone seemed to know each other all of a sudden?
Viggo circled the man in the grey overcoat, his mouth hanging open in amazement. “Uno! I never thought…”
Then, without warning, Uno Stovorsky slammed his fist into Viggo’s jaw.
“If I weren’t on duty, I’d kill you right now,” he growled.
Mitchell hoisted himself off the sofa, sweating. Another nightmare, but he had lost all memory of it now his eyes were open. His alarm clock no longer worked, but he knew it was about 3.00 a.m. because he could hear the punters being thrown out of the club below the flat. He staggered to the bathroom and doused his face with the cold brown water that dribbled out of the hot tap.
His brother would be back soon. As usual, he’d come home, start a fight, then fall into bed, drunk. It made Mitchell angry just thinking about him. He had been forced to share this place since he and his brother had run away from their foster home. Sometimes, Mitchell wished he could go back there, but he knew what he really longed for wasn’t possible – for his real parents to have come out alive from the crash.
Then he heard the click of the front door.
“Mitchell!” His brother sounded cheerful, but that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. “Come here, mate, I have to do something.”
Mitchell felt sick. He knew that greeting his brother face to face was the last thing he should do, but the flat was so small there weren’t exactly places to hide. He heard his brother stomp into the living room and pictured precisely what he was doing. First, he’d throw something at the sofa – probably his shoe. Then, when there was no reaction, he’d pull off the blankets and take on that mystified look, unable to comprehend why Mitchell wasn’t lying there, waiting to be harassed.
“Mitchell?” This time his brother sounded confused. Mitchell’s stomach turned over. He scrabbled through the bathroom cabinet for any medicine that wasn’t out of date. “Listen, mate,” his brother continued, still in the other room, “this guy said I could have ten grand, but, er…”
The bathroom door creaked open and Mitchell caught sight of his brother’s haggard face in the mirror.
“All right, bruv?”
“All right, Lenny.” Mitchell turned to face his brother, but clutched his stomach. It felt like something in his belly was burning.
“Like I said,” Lenny explained, blocking his brother in, “this bloke offered me ten grand. He had it there in a suitcase and everything.”
It wasn’t like him to talk so much, thought Mitchell. For some reason his brother had decided to make up some ridiculous story as a build-up to the violence. Then Lenny’s face took on a leering grin. Mitchell knew what that meant.
“I have to knock you around a bit,” Lenny chuckled. “Shall we do it in the living room?” He slapped Mitchell across the cheek then turned to go. Mitchell wasn’t following. The blood rushed to his face and his breathing deepened.
“Come on,” insisted Lenny and slapped Mitchell again, harder this time. It really stung. As Lenny turned a second time, Mitchell’s strange stomach-ache intensified into a ball of energy. It quivered inside him and leapt up his throat.
Mitchell wanted to shout, but the energy hit him in the head with five times the force of his brother’s slap. Lenny’s back was turned and, without even realising he was going to do it, Mitchell pounced.
Lenny was a lot taller and three years older, but Mitchell yanked him backwards by the throat and they fell to the floor.
“Oi!” cried Lenny, elbowing Mitchell in the ribs.
“How stupid do you think I am?” shouted Mitchell through his teeth. He kicked his brother away and threw himself on top of him. He led with his knee and slammed it into Lenny’s midriff.
“How do you like that?” Mitchell crowed.
Lenny rammed his fist towards Mitchell’s face. Mitchell caught it. He had never had this strength before, but he was too angry to notice. Instead, he revelled in his new superiority.
“I’m sick of you!” he screamed as he pounded his fists into his brother’s face. “This is how you make me feel!” Tears blurred his vision now, but fury kept his arms moving. He was numb inside. The pain that had built up all these years was pouring out. It felt like he wasn’t even in the room, but watching from a distance.
Then something pricked his senses – a flash of blue reflected in the mirrors and tiles. It bounced around the bathroom and pulled Mitchell out of his frenzy. He sprang to his feet. His brother didn’t move. His eyes were closed and blood covered his face.
That wasn’t me, thought Mitchell, but at the same time, What have I done? He ran to the living room and smeared his hand across the window. Through the streaks of blood on the glass, he saw an ambulance waiting in the street below. It was surrounded by three police cars.
Then the door of the flat burst open and Mitchell spun round to see two beefy men in black suits. They were pointing guns at him. His mind went blank. His brother’s battered face appeared before his eyes and he couldn’t think clearly. What was going on?
Before he could even raise his hands, his knees bent without him telling them to. Then his legs snapped straight and his entire body recoiled backwards – through the window.
Glass peppered Mitchell as he fell and in his head he heard himself scream. Then he landed – but not on the ground. Something cushioned his fall. He saw a dozen men staring at him with blank faces. Mitchell was lying on some kind of air cushion – it felt like a bouncy castle. Had all this been set up, waiting for him?
Then one man, tall and broad with a face like a wrinkled toad, pulled Mitchell to his feet.
“Looks like someone didn’t play nicely,” he said, cracking his jaw. Mitchell could hardly hear for all the electricity running through his head. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Leonard Glenthorne.”
“Murder?” Mitchell gasped. His hands were shoved behind his back and roughly clasped in metal.
“Your brother’s dead. Get in the car.”
“But—” Mitchell’s throat seized up. Nothing made sense. How had they come so quickly? How did they know Lenny was his brother? And worst of all, how could Lenny be dead?
Mitchell was grabbed on each side by two men. They rushed him to a long black car with leather seats and tinted windows. As his head was pushed down to guide him into the back seat, Mitchell saw a stretcher being wheeled out of the building. On it was a zipped-up, black body bag. On the side of the bag was a thin green stripe.
CHAPTER TWO – BROTHERS (#ulink_321871f7-7f05-582a-8d8a-0a49729561cf)
UNO STOVORSKY SIGNALLED to his unit to move out. They obeyed almost silently, retreating to the ring of vehicles a safe distance from the building. Stovorsky remained, eyeball to eyeball with Christopher Viggo.
“Come on,” Saffron said gently to the others, “we should leave them.”
Yannick nodded and shepherded them through the door opposite the kitchen. But Felix and Jimmy were transfixed.
“Jimmy!” snapped his mother. “Come here now! You too, Felix.”
The boys exchanged a glance. They knew they didn’t have a choice, no matter how much they wanted to know what was going on between the two men at the front door. They trudged after the others, into what looked like an unoccupied dormitory. There were four beds in the room, but the sheets were dusty, as if they hadn’t been slept in for years. Eva ran to one and curled up.
“It’s cold in here,” she squeaked, pulling her blanket round her.
“There are another couple of bedrooms upstairs,” Yannick explained, though nobody was paying him much attention. As soon as the door closed behind them, the shouting started. The old wattle-and-daub walls were too thick for Jimmy to make out what was being said, but it was clearly a ferocious argument.
“When I was little we used to have loads of people coming to stay all the time,” Yannick said with a nervous chuckle, as if trying to make sure nobody could hear what was going on in the next room. “For years nobody’s been here but my mother, of course.”
Nobody else in the bedroom said a word; they were all straining their ears to pick up any clues from next door.
“So let’s have the girls down here and the boys upstairs. How about that?” Yannick was making a poor job of sounding cheerful. The only reactions he got were distracted grunts and nods.
Then Jimmy noticed Saffron sitting on the furthest bed, turned towards the window. She was the only person who wasn’t trying to listen to the argument on the other side of the wall.
“What’s going on?” Jimmy whispered. “Who is this guy, Uno Sto…whatever?”
Saffron glanced over to make sure nobody else was paying attention. “He’s a French Secret Service operative,” she explained. “They must have tracked us entering French airspace.”
“I know that,” Jimmy interrupted. “I mean, how come Chris knows him, and what are they arguing about?” Saffron sighed and avoided looking into Jimmy’s eyes.
“When Chris left NJ7 he needed to disappear. He hid in Kazakhstan for a while, but wanted to use what he knew about NJ7 to put a stop to Ares Hollingdale. So he went to the DGSE.” Her eyes scanned the room. Yannick and Jimmy’s mother were doing their best to stop Felix, Georgie and Eva pressing their ears up against the wall.
“And that’s when he met this Uno guy,” Jimmy chipped in, to keep Saffron on track.
“Uno Stovorsky,” Saffron whispered. “Remember his name. He could help us.” Jimmy nodded. “But Chris fell out with the DGSE too.”
“Why? What happened?” Jimmy implored. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Saffron stood up and pulled in a deep breath. “Jimmy, they’re arguing about me.”
Moments later the door opened again and Yannick’s mother entered. “Jimmy,” she grunted in a thick French accent.
He stepped forward, but so did his mother. “They can’t keep me in the dark,” she muttered.
Saffron glided out of the room after them, as elegant as ever, to join the discussion.
“Don’t forget anything, Jimmy,” Felix called out. Jimmy didn’t have to respond. Normally, Felix wouldn’t even have asked – Jimmy would always have filled him in. But the last few days had been far from normal and the information Jimmy would be sharing was bound to be extraordinary.
“So this is your amazing automatic assassin?” Uno Stovorsky’s eyes seemed to pierce Jimmy’s skin. Jimmy opened his mouth to introduce himself, but before he could speak Stovorsky leapt from his chair. Jimmy’s eyes snapped wide open, catching the glint of a knife in Stovorsky’s fist.
Jimmy didn’t have to think. With the minimum of movement, he swayed to one side and caught Stovorsky’s wrist. With the knife point millimetres from his face, he chopped his other hand into the agent’s stomach and threw him over his shoulder. Jimmy snatched the knife before it hit the floor, where Stovorsky lay gasping for air.
“Enough, Jimmy!” shouted Viggo. “He was just testing you.”
“I know,” Jimmy replied. “Why do you think he’s still alive?” Jimmy started at his own words. He hadn’t known what he was going to say. It seemed the urge to kill was still just below the surface. He pushed away the deep sickness in his gut and reminded himself to keep control at every moment.
“Uno,” continued Viggo, “in return for your help, we are prepared to offer you a full display of Jimmy’s abilities and an inventory of the technology Britain is developing for use against France.”
Jimmy shuddered. What did Viggo mean by ‘a full display of Jimmy’s abilities’? He wasn’t a scientific sample! For a second he wanted to protest, but he quickly calmed down. He had learned to trust Christopher Viggo.
Stovorsky was still picking himself up off the floor. His expression was grim. “This information is as useless now as it was when you came to me all those years ago,” he growled. Jimmy watched Viggo’s face betray a hint of helplessness.
“Let me draw you a picture,” Stovorsky went on. “Jimmy was designed in a test tube by scientists at NJ7. Dr Higgins was one of them and he’s still there. Ares Hollingdale was another, before he became Prime Minister. The new weapon was assigned to two agents, Ian and Helen Coates.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Jimmy’s mother, “I’m right here.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs Coates, I didn’t realise it was you.” He bowed his head slightly and took her hand up to his lips.
“How do you know this?” Viggo cut in.
Stovorsky’s demeanour shifted again, back to the animal aggression he directed at his rival. “That’s not all we know. We know Jimmy is not the first. There is another assassin, two years older, but he went missing shortly after his parents were killed. NJ7 thinks they died in a car accident.”
Jimmy felt like each piece of new information was a brick being hurled at him. There was another genetically programmed assassin? Why had nobody told him? He was dumbfounded, though he made a point of trying not to show it. Fortunately, nobody noticed Jimmy’s furrowed brow. Helen Coates and Saffron Walden were sharing a moment of concern. Viggo and Stovorsky were caught up in their own rivalry.
“Do you think I’ve been sitting on my hands since we last met?” Stovorsky jeered.
“But—” Viggo started.
“We have our own sources in England. You can’t tell me anything I don’t already know. All I can offer is that we let you live here in France. We can’t protect you, and we certainly can’t help you in your personal campaign against Ares Hollingdale.” Viggo tried to interrupt again, but Stovorsky continued over him. “Hollingdale may be anti-democracy and he may be anti-France, but the DGSE can’t meddle with anyone unless they pose a direct threat to France.”
The reaction was silence. Jimmy’s heart ached. He so wanted to go back to Felix with some good news. But how could they get anywhere near Felix’s parents without the resources of a major international agency? How else could they sneak back into England?
“Don’t look so glum!” boomed Stovorsky suddenly. “I’m letting you stay in the country. I’ll make sure you’re not arrested and, if you stay on the move, the chances are NJ7 won’t find you.” He shook his head and sighed. “Honestly, you English. Don’t you recognise a lucky break? Did you really think I was going to help you overthrow the British Government?” He dusted off the shoulders of his overcoat and strode to the door, muttering under his breath in French.
“That’s not why we need help.” Helen’s voice stopped him. “Jimmy, get Felix in here.” Jimmy flung open the door to the next room. Eva, Georgie and Felix all pretended they hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop. Without a word Felix stepped forward.
“This is Felix Muzbeke,” Jimmy’s mother continued. “The Government is holding his parents illegally. We just want to bring them here to safety.” Felix put on his most winsome expression.
Only now did Stovorsky turn round. He glanced at Felix then quickly turned away.
“Do you have children, Mr Stovorsky?” Jimmy’s mother asked.
Stovorsky held his face in his hands then rubbed his eyes. “What do you need?” he huffed.
Viggo’s response was immediate. “Safe passage back to London so we can find out where they are being held. We need money and equipment. We need all the help we can get.”
Stovorsky groaned and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He waited a long time before speaking, then eventually he muttered, “I’ll see what I can do.” Wearily, he picked up a slat of a broken shutter from the floor. “Promise me this is just about the prisoners. Nothing else.”
